Feature

The right approach to building teams

Sudipta Dev analyses why popular team building activities often fail to get the desired results

Can rock climbing, rappelling down a waterfall, beating drums in unison…and a plethora of many such experiential programmes actually be able to build self-driven well-knit teams in your organisation? Despite the popularity of these team-building activities, which are considered the best approach to bonding people by many, such programmes are rarely taken seriously by professionals who are enlisted to participate. Instead of integrating team-building efforts in an organisation’s operations, the focus is on adventure activities which fail to make a difference on-the-job.

"There has to be a culture of open line of communication. We fail to realise that for individuals to work together they should have a shared goal, which is critical" -Pallavi Jha Managing Director Dale Carnegie Training India

One of the major reasons why team-building activities fail is that the passion of the leader is not always shared by the other participants. Captain Raghu Raman, CEO, Mahindra Special Services Group, acknowledges that one of the strongest reasons for this lack of seriousness is that the employees are taken as a granted resource, “It is ‘assumed’ that they will participate with the passion and vigour that the team leader may personally have. However, is often not the case. The things that drive the team leader may not be the same that drive the team members and in the pursuit of the business goals team leaders may often miss this fact.” Raman points out that the ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Zu had mentioned about a particular general in his famous treatise The Art of War. This general was a great warrior for he knew no pain, hunger, fatigue or fear, which was why the emperor would never put soldiers under him—for his men knew pain, hunger and fatigue.

The fact also remains that team creation is an issue in the context of the IT industry. Programmers who are used to working as individuals after three or four years become leaders and the transition is a big challenge for them, when from working as an individual they have to work as a team. “There has to be a culture of open line of communication. We fail to realise that for individuals to work together they should have a shared goal, which is critical,” says Pallavi Jha, Managing Director, Dale Carnegie Training India. “The focus on personal excellence and quarterly results rather than long-term organisational goal solidity is the problem. The development attention is more on creating individual gladiators rather than co- ordinated teams. Quite obviously the ideal mix lies in creating environments that develop individual performances and creating synchronised teams but the latter requires a more long-term ho-rizon which is difficult to find in these times,” adds Raman.

Why experiential training often fails

To expect a group of people to go for a white water rafting expedition or a three-day long trekking trip, then return to the office and work as a great team is expecting too much from such activities. Furthermore, many times only a single person or a few people from a workgroup are sent for such programmes and expected to come and work in a team where nobody else has participated, does not solve the team-building purpose. “Sometimes it is good to let your hair down, but the question is—does it add value? A lot of things have become a fad, but at the end of the day it is about counting the dollars spent. In a corporate set-up fun also has a purpose which is a bottomline driver,” states Jha.

"Teams can be and must be built only in an open and transparent environment. I would not recommend any covert operation in this regard" Chandrasekhar Sripada VP, People Relationships Management Cap Gemini Consulting India

It is also true that any tool is as good as the people who use it. Chandrasekhar Sripada, Vice-president, People Relatio-nships Management, Cap Gemini Consulting India, asserts, “Primarily these activities are not well-planned and designed. Every such initiative should be preceded by a proper diagnosis and the activities should be planned to ensure that the root causes are handled.” Evidently, there is no miracle cure for team problems—it has to be diagnostic. This might involve the nature of training or a change in the composition of the team, etc.

Bob McGannon,Vice-president, Mindavation, a US headquartered project management training and consulting organisation explains that traditionally people who are attracted to the IT profession have a personality that focusses on science and the details of topics such as computer engineering. They seek technical creativity, and the consistency of logic. Dealing with various personalities, and the inconsistencies they bring isn’t always a desirable activity. “There are of course exceptions to this rule. This problem is made worse by the pressures of today’s business world. Tight deadlines, cost restrictions and growing complexity of technology require IT professionals to focus more tightly on their primary craft, and team- building is often viewed as a distraction from that focus,” adds McGannon.

Building teams secretly

McGannon espouses the concept of building teams secretly. “When the leader engages the team in activities that have a distinct business purpose and that purpose is known and agreed to by team members, they will more likely actively engage in that activity. If it also happens to build relationships and team synergy, you accomplish multiple benefits with one activity in a relatively short period of time,” says McGannon, adding that the process involves viewing every instance when a leader has a team assembled as an opportunity to conduct some short form of team-building. Each exercise should have a business purpose, for instance determining a set of standard needs for status meetings, or how to conduct a discussion when technical team members disagree, and should be short and focussed. “Any instance when you learn the techniques and approaches preferred by team members is a team- building exercise,” insists McGannon.

McGannon reiterates that it is not costly or time-consuming to build teams. Short, focussed exercises that are part of any instance when the team is together is the key to make this happen. “The difficult part is to ensure that the leader or project manager is aware of this, and takes the time to see that these team-building activities occur. It is possible to ensure team effectiveness by being conscious about what is going on in the team, monitoring its progress, and intervening when the team gets ‘stuck’ or when personality conflicts stop a team from performing to its fullest capabilities.”

The stealth approach to building teams works best when it is focussed on a fixed-term objective. “Stealth teams cannot rely on long-term appreciation or buy-in from members. It is a more mercenary approach and can lead to great short-term benefits,” says Harish Bhattiprolu, Director Sales, Kenexa Technologies (India). It is advantageous to build teams secretly in certain instances. Bhattiprolu lists the same:

• Secrecy in the goals required to be achieved
• Quick turn-around times for teams to be set up and deployed
• A need to innovate while keeping time period of such innovation low could benefit from a stealth team
• When leaders want to build quick high-performance teams without the delays of adhering to processes.

The team builder

The pertinent question is: Who should be the team builder? “The fulcrum on which such sharp-shooting teams are built is the leader. The team leader must have great experience at building high-performance, charged teams. In order to make the best leader the team builder must be a team leader. Such stealth teams can be managed best by a leader who not only brings operational efficiency but also domain leadership,” says Bhattiprolu, adding that when teams have a need to be built in such secrecy, the goals and tasks needing to be fulfilled are in all probability, critical. Consequently, leaders with high performance experience are crucial to the success.

The operational aspect

Not all agree that an unobtrusive approach to building teams is really beneficial. Chandrasekhar Sripada of Cap Gemini does not believe that a covert approach can help in the team-building process. “Teams can be and must be built only in an open and transparent environment. In fact people do not work as teams since they cannot confront enough. So I would not recommend any covert operation in this regard,” he insists.

Raghu Raman believes that while an unobtrusive appr-oach has its merits, pushing a team to limits requires regular (and often forceful) interventions from senior management. “Also, in all fairness, a team must be given course correction in a meaningful fashion. It would be unfair to let a team operate on its own for a substantial length of time and then give them corrective advice when the bolt is shot. I think there must be periods when the team is called upon to deliver hard reviews where individual and group accountabilities are assessed and lulls are given in between for the team themselves to jell and deliver its expectations,” he says.

The answer probably lies in including team-building within the operations of an organisation. “Team work is when people start realising the interdependencies that they share with each other. And to achieve that aspect integrating team-play from an operational aspect is probably the only way to make some meaningful difference,” adds Raman. Elaborating on the process he says that the organisation must define two or three of its core critical activities. The next step would be to map out the entire activity in granular detail and perhaps depict it visually. Then they must evaluate how those activities can be performed better as a team or how existing bottlenecks could be removed through a re-alignment of processes or activities. Having achieved that, specific 100-days plans must be crafted and responsibility accorded to teams. “After that it is a question of execution and reward management,” concludes Raman.

sudipta@expresscomputeronline.com